Six By Sondheim: Everyone Likes Neurotics!

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In HBO’s Six By Sondheim (tonight, 9/8C) the renowned composer and lyricist gives away the secret of his success in the opening few moments. ‘I like neurotics,’ he says – meaning that everyone has problems and can relate to characters who have problems. The hard part, he implies, is writing those characters – and that’s what this HBO documentary is all about.

There are a very few writers/composers/lyricists who have become legends just from producing musical plays – think of Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Jerome Kern and you realize just how short a list comes readily to mind. Without doubt, Stephen Sondheim belongs on that list.

Structured around six songs, HBO Documentary Films’ Six By Sondheim is composed of, primarily, Sondheim talking about what he does, why he does it and, to some extent, how he does it. Interspersed with performances – mostly clips, but with three re-stagings expressly for this film – are clips of Sondheim giving answers to questions we almost never hear but which come from a myriad of well-known and perceptive interviewers ranging from James Lipton to Diane Sawyer, from Mike Douglas to Adam Guettel, from to Andre Previn to David Frost.

The biographical aspect of the film is both unnerving (whose mother writes him a letter to tell him her only regret is that he was born?) and inspiring (his mother knew Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a kind of surrogate father/mentor to Sondheim). When he talks about his writing/composing, he practically glows – and his warmth and humor are readily apparent (his story about asking Hammerstein to critique an early play he wrote for school is particularly instructive – and funny).

Besides talking about the who, how and why of his writing, Sondheim also talks about the importance of teaching – and we get to see him teaching both in a classroom and through his giving direction for his plays (the direction he gives the lead of Sweeny Todd is a great example). From what we see, he’s clearly as good a teacher as he is a writer.

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The six songs around which the film is structured are: Something’s Coming, from West Side Story (music by Leonard Bernstein), a late addition to the play that was written in a day to give Larry Kert’s tony more presence and confidence; Opening Doors, from Merrily We Roll Along, about three young writers trying to break into show business (his most autobiographical song); Send in the Clowns (A Little Night Music), written for Glynis Johns’ specific voice and made a hit two years later by Judy Collins and Frank Sinatra (separately); I’m Still Here (Follies), a last-minute for a very one-note comic song to be performed by Yvonne DeCarlo; Being Alive (Company), a song that required Sondheim (a loner since childhood) to interview married friends for comments about what made their marriages work; and Sunday (Sunday in the Park with George), inspired by Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Through clips and re-stagings, we get to see parts of performances of several Sondheim songs, including a previously unseen clip of Ethel Merman singing Gypsy. Some of the surprises that await include Dean Jones (best known – in film and TV, at least – as a comic actor) giving a stunning rendition of Being Alive from D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary, Company: Original Cast Album (with Elaine Stritch in the chorus!), and a montage of several artists singing Send in the Clowns (including Collins, Sinatra and a Welsh men’s chorus).

The three re-stagings, all brilliant, by the way, are of Opening Doors (America Ferrera, Darren Criss, Jeremy Jordan, Laura Osnes, Jackie Hoffman and Sondheim), I’m Still Here (Jarvis Cocker in a performance that is simultaneously campy and poignant – which is to say, he totally gets it), and Send in the Clowns (Audra McDonald sings; Will Swenson plays guitar).

Six By Sondheim spins the usual documentary talking heads by making almost all of them Sondheim himself. Though the clips aren’t arranged in chronological order, they have a flow that makes and illustrates the points being made, the events being talked about. The use of clips to give us glimpses of musical magic from the likes of Many Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Glynis Johns and others, serves to refresh our memories – though most of us may not have seen a Sondheim play on Broadway, it’s interesting how many of these songs we’ve heard, somewhere, before.

Director James Lapine, a collaborator of Sondheim’s (he wrote the book for and directed Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Passion and Sondheim on Sondheim), makes Six By Sondheim feel like a single conversation between good friends. It’s easy to fall into the rhythms of that conversation and be drawn along through Sondheim’s life and works – which means that Lapine has done a very good job. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Sondheim is as interesting and entertaining as his work.

Final Grade: A

Note: Six By Sondheim will repeat on December 12 (9:30/8:30am), 15 (11:45/10:45 am), 17 (12:30am/11:30pm), 20 (10:45/9:45am) and 28 (2/1pm).

Photos courtesy of HBO